


The Western Christmas Invasion

by alba17



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Christmas, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 07:38:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alba17/pseuds/alba17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor goes out West. Trouble follows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Western Christmas Invasion

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: 'Tis the Season. Christmas in August is [an actual Yellowstone tradition.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_in_August_\(Yellowstone\))

“So how did this tradition get started?” a visitor asked the young woman behind the reception desk. The lobby of the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park was decorated with a Christmas tree and Christmas cards and a man was playing carols on the piano. The air outside was brilliantly sunny and a crisp 75 degrees. It was August.

“Well, they say it was a freak blizzard way back in August of 1912. Or maybe it was 1924... Never been one like it since, anyway.”

**

A wagon pulled up to the Inn. One of the passengers, who’d come a very long way, observed how similar the surrounding geysers were to the Simmering Sands of Soultan, a billion light years away in another galaxy. There, the sands were red and the sky was yellow. Here, an old buffalo stood stock still a few hundred yards away, contemplating a bubbling mudpot.

**

Forty-eight hours later, the landscape was blanketed with a layer of white, so thick nobody could get in or out of the park for days. Only the visitor from far, far away, who called himself the Doctor, knew that the white substance wasn’t snow, but the remains of an alien spaceship which had tried to harness the power of the area’s massive geothermal energy.

The Doctor sat in the lobby of Old Faithful, in a chair fashioned from rough-hewn logs, sipping from a mug of mulled cider and listening to the trapped park visitors chatter on about the freak weather. He considered it a job well done, having just averted an earthquake which would have obliterated the entire western part of the North American continent.

When a beautiful young woman with dark hair and kind, intelligent eyes asked him to join her at the piano for a few verses of _Joy to the World,_ he happily agreed. Christmas was one Earth tradition he’d grown accustomed to, even if it always seemed to involve saving the planet one more time.


End file.
